111

Have the prices of the Choice of Games games (not sure about the Hosted) gone up a few dollars over the past several months? I think some of the games that used to sell for $4-5 are now selling for $6-7 on Steam, the App Store, et al.

I know absolutely nothing about the business end of how these decisions are made, but I was curious about how that pricepoint was reached, and how it has affected sales over the past few months. II think there’s been a slight uptick in that sort of 1-star and 2-star review, but there’s always been that sort of grumbling on the part of people who don’t with to pay for the non-free chapters…

2 Likes
112

I see all these people complaining about 3-5$ games. I actually paid 7.19$ or 7.29$ (can’t remember if it was .19$ or .29$) for the latest game The hero unmasked. And let me be clear, that is too much in my country where the fanciest coffee you can possibly order costs 1.3$ (unless you put edible gold in it). The thing is not everyone is from North America or wealthy parts of Europe. A movie ticket here is 2.5$ for comparison so yes, I do find the price increase difficult. I honestly bought that game only because it was 300k long and I like long games. I did like the plot, but if it had been shorter I wouldn’t have bought it.

P.s.: I have bought Stephen King “The shining” paperback for 7.19$ (Brand New and from the bookstore) in my country and that also took a lot of work to write yet is a lot longer…

3 Likes
113

I have taken a small break from choice of games the past year and so when I returned I was shocked to discover that the prices have gone to almost 7euros/dollars. I am not one that complains when I have to buy something, I understand that time and effort went into creating a game but for some games to cost almost as much as other games that have both art and music is ridiculous.

I love supporting indie developers but I feel that this is too much.

3 Likes
114

I think there are only a few titles that cost $7. Most of them are anywhere from $2-5.

115

I count 15 titles that are $7 or over on Steam and 10 more that are $6.

4 Likes
116

Huh! They must be more expensive on Steam than Android.

1 Like
117

Steam Prices seem to have been raised as a whole.

3 Likes
118

It’s not just steam. In google play Choice of Robots is 6.49euros! Mecha Ace 5.49e. I should feel happy I bought them when they first came out I suppose. I don’t think it will be easy for me to buy many games from now on. It is becoming too pricey for me unfortunately.
But I am also wondering why that happened. Is it because of the platforms hosting the games? Is it some taxation?

2 Likes
119

I would have to dig up the post, but I remember reading a post by one of the people at CoG that Valve decided text games like CoG had to be higher than they initially planned.

Two reasons come to mind for that. The first is obviously Valve likes money. The second is the perception if something costs more, then it must be worth more.

Also, I won’t be surprised if various taxes were raised. I know a couple years back VAT for European countries went up, and earlier in Feb. of this year, Valve mentioned raising prices for countries like Australia due to rising taxes…and naturally pass that on to consumers.

Finally, CoG probably raised some of their prices as well on their own end. They’ve hired more people recently, and keeping their games running on all platforms does take time, and therefore money.

5 Likes
120

Plus, it is all about what the market will bear. If 100 people are willing to pay $7 compared to 110 people willing to pay $5, might as well jack that price up. The remaining customers cover the fee for whom the higher amount proves untenable. They have enough of a built-in readership that any title sells at least somewhat well, regardless of price.

Though watching how Knight of the Fellowship and Thief-Taker have done proves the potential value of at least some lower price games as well. Both are priced lower than average of late for HG and CoG titles respectively, and at least on the iOS store both have proved pretty leggy compared to other recent releases. Obviously there are X factors like story quality, popularity of story setting or previously established writers, even what else released at the same time on the App Store. But I would still guess a primary reason both chart well a couple weeks after release is that cherry price of $2 and $4 respectively.

1 Like
121

I miss the Google Chrome store, it was the only place that sold in Europe at fair prices, plus the format was much easier and more user-friendly too.
Taxes are part of the story, however Steam also likes to gauge its European customers by directly converting dollar prices to Euro and then adding the EU’s VAT and $ 4.99 simply isn’t equivalent to 4.99 Euro’s.

5 Likes
122

Germany has had a 19% sales tax for ages now. A decade now according to Google. Most CoG games seem to go around 6,49€ these days. Edit: Android PlayStore prices is what I’m looking at. Even if you round comfortably you’re left with ~5,20€ that’s 6,20$ net. If they only cost 5 bucks in the US that’s actually something to feel grumpy about.

While it’s still not a price that’s forbidding to me it’s made me consider and pick and choose what I buy. I used to gobble them all up but a one-two punch of two really uninspiring games and a straight out bad one I actually tried (and failed) to return coupled with the rising prices had made me wary. Luckily you can play test the beginnings of most new games these days.

I don’t really have an opinion I just wanted to put European pricing into perspective.

1 Like
123

Whether the price is expensive depends on the time you play. If one game that you can play it for one year,then you only spend very little money every day on average.

124

Well, I may as well add my two cents on the subject. I have made well known my position regarding the importance of HG label, the good conditions CoG offers authors and mine happy acceptance of 3-5€ price range.

But this is starting to become a bit too expensive, I mean, outside the US and even outside wealthy parts of Europe, the latest CoG’s releases are just crazy expensive. I have been gladly supporting CoG and HG so far, buying as many interesting games I could find, but with this prices I will go from reading\buying 75% of CoG and HG label to 10%. Almost 8 euros for a digital book is too much, especially because if I double that, I can buy one high-quality novel from one of my favorite authors.

If this prices work for the company, whose goal is obviously and naturally to make money, great, but be prepared to lose clients on an already niche-market. I will most certainly reduce in great deal the amount of money spent in CoG releases.

Just saying.

1 Like
125

If you don’t mind my asking, do you mean a high-quality physical novel?

Otherwise, I’m not quite clear why it would make sense to pay twice as much for a 100,000-ish word linear digital novel by a high-quality author. How is that better than paying the running CoG price for a 300,000 plus-or-minus word interactive novel by a high-quality author?

The higher prices have been rough for me too, so I wait for sales or buy my favourites on opening (or beta test and pay in time and mental effort, if I’m able, instead of money). But the prices still seem amazingly cheap to me compared to conventional digital-format novels, and even other choice-based games when going by potential hours of game play.

Also the apps seem to be ranking quite high on iOS on a regular basis, so maybe the market is becoming less niche and more open with time. I hope so; I’d like to see more and more readers especially discover interactive fiction, and ChoiceScript fiction especially. A lot of the stories on here are wonderful.

11 Likes
126

I will never cease to be amazed by people who say it’s too expensive, especially when sooner or later they reveal that they are either upset you don’t get the whole text in one go and/or only ever play a game once.
It’s baffling. To say the least.

3 Likes
127

Finishes playing Unnatural and tin star for the umteenth time people do that barbaric and impractical practice still for shame people… :face_with_monocle: :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:
In all seriousness that is a serious waste of ones money to only play a game once.

In this particular case I’m on the fence on agreeing with you or disagreeing
On the disagree side I have spent time being broke as a skunk and playing the game of finding money on the road as a child to find lunch, so i can see even a dollar price hike as expensive for entertainment budget if you only ever spend 10 a month on frivolous spending allowance

On the agreeing side
Comparatively to most forms of entertainment this isn’t much in cost to entertainment value, it is still in the tender balance of entertainment.
I have spent hour re-reading games like tin star,life of the wizard, and zombie exodus just becuase they were fun and kept my attention better than some Triple A games due to their requirement of the reader to control their own fate instead of just being along for the ride.

This is a double edged sword in that sense that some of the games I probably would have preferred to pay less for due to them feeling a little less than the usual quality I get from most games here but that frequency has been going down the longer this company has been around due to their steadily improving fan base and rules they make on quality.

In the end I’d say the price increase being acceptable wins out in most instances for these games. If it keeps going up this may change but as of now it’s still in the reasonably fair market range.

3 Likes
128

Wouldn’t surprise me if complaints were actually part of the reason why older titles went up in price to be even with the newer ones. Old games were amazingly cheap, (too cheap really even I’ll admit that as someone who was buying them) so later games were getting compared to them. IE I bought this 100000 word game and it was $2, why should I pay $4 for this one? 1* rating!

But yep, got to also watch the exchange rates too. I’m not working in USD and when my currency has dropped, I’ve found it makes games seem more expensive than they actually are. I suspect that may be an issue for the euro too. (Although I haven’t checked the exchange rates lately).

5 Likes
129

Yep, that’s it.

Portuguese minimum wage is 500 something euros,and our average salary is 700 euros. I don’t even have a regular income because I am getting my PhD. Yeah, paying 8 euros for a digital book is a lot, especially when put on a worldwide perspective. Americans earn a lot.

Agreed. But somewhere around a year ago, the prices were in a fair range. Authors and the company needs to earn money, but there will be a point when the price increase will reduce sales, it already has with me. If it is a game from one of my favorite CoG authors or a really amazing game, I will buy it, otherwise I’ll save my money. I can’t complain for my choices nor my income, I can just state that the price increase has already made CoG lose money from my part, just saying.

I think euros are still slightly higher than dollars. What makes the price of CoG relatively higher in Europe is probably a mix of the higher VAT and income taxes (the game costs more and people have less money because they pay something like 30-50% of their income in vários taxes), and the lower salaries in Europe, which makes it harder for us to buy them. I mean, in Portugal or Spain 20k per year is a pretty good salary, and 10k isn’t such a bad one (it’s actually the average salary in Portugal, if one adds the extra salaries of vacations and christmas, otherwise it’s 8400 euros).

1 Like
130

Last I looked 1 Euro was worth 1.16 USD, which is roughly the difference VAT makes. 19% in Germany to be exact, no idea where it’s at elsewhere to be honest. Not in the range where it’s justified for the actual number in front of the currency sign to be very much different.

Which begs the question what the US price is currently.

1 Like